GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP)  Two out of eight Hamas prisoners who broke out of a Cairo prison as a wave of anti-government protests swept Egypt arrived back in Gaza on Sunday, an official source said.

A senior official in the Hamas government confirmed all eight were on their way back to Gaza, with the report also confirmed by one of the escapees.

By Sunday morning, at least two of the prisoners who had been held in Abu Zaabal prison, northeast of Cairo, had made it back to Gaza, entering the strip through the tunnels which run under the border, a Palestinian official said on condition of anonymity.

Already discredited by the extent of its collaboration and capitulation exposed in the Palestine Papers, the PA will be weakened even further. With no credible "peace process" to justify its continued "security coordination" with Israel, or even its very existence, the countdown may well begin for the PA's implosion. Even the US and EU support for the repressive PA police-state-in-the-making may no longer be politically tenable. Hamas may be the immediate beneficiary, but not necessarily in the long term. For the first time in years we are seeing broad mass movements that, while they include Islamists, are not necessarily dominated or controlled by them.

There is also a demonstration effect for Palestinians: the endurance of the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes has been based on the perception that they were strong, as well as their ability to terrorize parts of their populations and co-opt others. The relative ease with which Tunisians threw off their dictator, and the speed with which Egypt, and perhaps Yemen, seem to be going down the same road, may well send a message to Palestinians that neither Israel's nor the PA's security forces are as indomitable as they appear. Indeed, Israel's "deterrence" already took a huge blow from its failure to defeat Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006, and Hamas in Gaza during the winter 2008-09 attacks.

As for Abbas's PA, never has so much international donor money been spent on a security force with such poor results. The open secret is that without the Israeli military occupying the West Bank and besieging Gaza (with the Mubarak regime's help), Abbas and his praetorian guard would have fallen long ago. Built on the foundations of a fraudulent peace process, the US, EU and Israel with the support of the decrepit Arab regimes now under threat by their own people, have constructed a Palestinian house of cards that is unlikely to remain standing much longer.

"We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt -- however it ends -- will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine.

"If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser. As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, 'The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress.

"'Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse' ('Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast,' 29 January 2011)."

JERUSALEM (AFP)  Israel's leaders anxiously watched events in Egypt on Sunday as analysts warned that if a new leadership was dominated by Islamists it could threaten 30 years of peace between the two neighbours.

As the wave of unprecedented protests continued to engulf Egypt, Israeli officials have been nervously eyeing developments and assessing the likely impact on ties.

"We are attentively following what is going on in Egypt and in our region," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday after holding late-night talks with US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

GAZA, (PIC)-- As expected, the current wave of revolution in the Arab world is moving towards the Palestinian territories mainly the West Bank.

Activists have launched a campaign on Facebook demanding the removal of the West Bank-ruling Fatah Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization. PA chief Mahmoud Abbas is taking threats seriously.

Inspired by protests in Egypt and Tunisia that ousted the president, the campaign says it is fed up with the concessions made on Palestinian land and rights and persecution of resistance fighters.

"The Palestinians have completely lost trust in the Fatah movement who threw itself into the arms of Israel and became a tool for security coordination and murder of Palestinian citizens and execution of American policies in the region," the site says.

Useful Searches

About USMessageBoard.com

USMessageBoard.com was founded in 2003 with the intent of allowing all voices to be heard. With a wildly diverse community from all sides of the political spectrum, USMessageBoard.com continues to build on that tradition. We welcome everyone despite political and/or religious beliefs, and we continue to encourage the right to free speech.

Come on in and join the discussion. Thank you for stopping by USMessageBoard.com!